Wednesday, August 08, 2012

I shall smite you since I paid $1,000 to do so!

I haven't blogged in years. Fucking YEARS! Apparently, getting hooked on online PvP vampire games can take a massive bite out of blogging (and your wallet). I went from one game to another to another etc. At one point I was playing four separate PvP games and paying for all of them!

Wait ... you don't get what I mean by paying? Oh christ. This will take a bit of explaining.

You see, these games suck you in saying "Free to Play". You start playing and find out that getting a VIP/Member pack/Donator Card (whatever it may be called) to the game gives you privileges that last for 30 days. So you buy a monthly VIP (or however it's packaged). There is hit to the wallet number 1. Then, there are those that can "kill" you all the time. That's when you discover if you pay even MORE money, you can bulk yourself up in hopes to one day kill them. There is super hit to the wallet number 2. The caveat to that little problem is that most of these players have been playing for five or six years and can pretty much squish you. So, unless you feel like spending your tuition for the next three years or sacrificing about 6 months of mortgage payments, just abandon that dream.

These online
games are heroin to those who feel their life revolves around the net.
You start one and you soon find yourself spending hours in front of the
laptop, chatting with other players, and devising ways to win wars.

Hell, I knew people that would forgo days of sleep JUST so their "coven"
could remain undefeated in a war. I shit you not.

I knew people that
spent tens of thousands on a single game. You read that correct. Tens
of thousands. Holy hot french fry on a dill pickle spear! That's just
borderline insane! I'm sure there are charities out there that would
have loved to receive some of that excess cash, but making sure your
character isn't "pistol whipped" by the big boys is a much better
investment.

Oh and I can't talk about these games without mentioning the one common thread in all of them: drama. OMFG. Facebook doesn't hold a candle to the drama that can be drummed up in these domains. I'll admit to be both sucked in and instigating drama in a game. It's so fucking easy. Even the most stoic of individuals can be wrangled onto the drama train.One of the leading causes of drama is "marriage". In most of these games, one can develop a relationship and get married. There is no ceremony nor is there a sharing of tax status. This is NOT a real marriage, folks. HA!! Try telling some of these people. I knew someone whose real life marriage was ruined because of an online marriage. That's some pretty heavy duty drama right there. Granted, some of these "marriages" do churn out real life connections. Yeah, then those people get to meet and in some cases live with that other person. Suddenly, Miss Wicked Nightglider isn't the sexy, bombshell of a gladiator you once thought. She's actually a manipulative shrew that now has you devising ways of chopping her up and transporting her in three different cars for a rather unceremonious burial.

Now not all people look at these relationships as real so to lump them all together would be rather unfair of me. Still, majority of them are bunny boilers in the making.

I will admit to getting sucked into a few of these so-called "relationships". Do I regret them? Some I do. A few I don't. I've actually met some of my dearest friends that way.

So there we are, I played these vampire games and wasted pretty much 1/10th of my life on them. That's over 4 years! All that time was devoted to creating a character, building stats, joining and working for a coven/clan/gang/mob, and socialising endlessly.

Guess where that got me, folks? Fucking nowhere. Four years of money and time spent for nothing. It's not like I can put any of that shit on a resume. If I did, unless I was going for a job at the PA Renaissance Faire, no interviews would come my way.

I've retired from online games. Those things ... they really are nothing but games. Nothing is real except the money and time you waste. No one is real either. You really don't beat the shit out of anyone. I used to love it when other players got all, "I'm gonna kick your ass everyday!" You do that, sport. While you're clicking a mouse button, I'll be sitting here watching TBBT on DVD.